That is why it is no surprise that, in countries like Bolivia, the government has reversed course with a wave of nationalizations in key energy and utility sectors to try to pick up the slack left by a limp private sector. The Economist’s view on these expropriations / returns to state control are surprisingly sanguine, given the paper’s pro-market orientation.

What’s really special about the piece, though, is that it expresses in two sentences the central problem with utilities in Latin America:

“The privately run electricity companies have not been able to invest as heavily as their public water counterparts. Part of the reason is that the government has forced them to cut their prices.”